I had absolutely no intention of posting again tonight. Then I clicked on a video link on Neil's blog.
I rather like this souped up version of Advance Australia Fair. I am including it here just in case there are any readers of this blog who do not already follow Neil!
It si now 342 days since Technorati updated this blog. The blog presently rank's 3,260,072 in the world. I have pinged them and recently emailed them. But they won't update.
This is not the only one of my blogs that this has happened to. I need to do something.
I assume that someone from T scans the web. So what I am going to do is this. Each day I will ping them. Each day that they fail to update I will run another Technorati sucks post.Let's see how long it takes them to pick it all up and do something about it.
I picked this cartoon up from Snakes on the Plane. I am not sure of the original publication.
In my introductory post on my favourite blogs I suggested that the growing power of blogs and blogging lay in part in the combination of the large number of observers combined with the speed of the transmission process. I went on to say:
I am wondering whether the Australian citizenship test might not be a case in point, submerging Mr Howard's plans under a tide of ridicule.Quite simply, the blogosphere will pick up and discuss things far faster than the conventional media or the indeed the political machines. This also holds true in professional areas where blogs have become a major source of information on professional topics. So while most of us individual bloggers have little influence, bloggers as a collective group do have an impact.
The initial response when the Government first mooted the idea of the proposed citizenship text was the circulation by people of lists of suggested questions, many very funny indeed.
At 12 am on 18 May the on-line editions of the Australian papers (here and here for example) carried samples of the proposed questions. By then, as best I can work out, there had been more than forty blog posts about the test, most with very similar reactions. Australians are inveterate test takers, so everyone was recording their results. People were also questioning the validity of some of the questions.
In the much smaller world of my favourite blogs, in Aspiring citizens asked to pay Trivial Pursuits - in English Ninglun (Neil) posted the questions, answers and his responses at 3.01 pm on 18 May.
This was the first I had heard of it. I found some of the questions and answers trivial, a few simply wrong in historical terms.
At 12.57 am today, 20 May, Legal Eagle posted her reactions. 12.57am! Leagle Eagle, you are as bad as me, if just at the other end of the day.
As always, Legal Eagle's post is a thoughtful piece, and I commend it to all readers. By now, a blog search shows pages and pages of blog posts on the topic.
Bloggers are not representative of the general Australian population. However, the size and speed of blogger responses on the topic suggest that the Government has a problem, although one arguably reduced by the fact that the Labor opposition had previously locked itself into support for some form of test.
The first popular response to the idea of a test beyond the instinctive Australian tendency to irony was arguably positive. The idea that we should expect our new citizens to have some understanding of Australia seemed hard to argue against. Now that the details are coming out, issues of varying ideology and belief are starting to come into play, along with our continuing sense of the ridiculous.
The test is clearly in trouble. This may not be sufficient to stop it, the Government appears locked in, but the whole issue is shaping up as another problem for them.
Postscript
I notice from Legal Eagle that the Government is denying that the questions were theirs.
Strewth, mate, you can't believe a bloody thing that you read in the newspapers! Two newspapers in this case. Blowed if I know. But it all smells a bit like a fly blown sheep, if you get the drift.
Speaking of fly blown sheep, here is a question for the new test. Why has PETRA gone to the dags?
Still on questions, the answer to question 1 of Neil's suggested questions is of course c, Jim Belshaw.
Still speaking of questions, I find that my eldest, Helen, has put a list up on her blog. I especially liked question 28.
Is it best to take a sick day on:
a) When the cricket's on
b) When the cricket's on
c) When the cricket's on?
Now that should appeal to John.
I have just finished my post on Gordon Smith's photoblog. I had great fun trawling my way through past photos.
One of the reasons why I have decided to do my favourite blogs as a series lay in a disparaging comment about blogs and bloggers from a work colleague. She cannot be bothered with blogs because, in my words, they are all personal wails upon the world.
Now there is some truth in this. But it really misses a key point, that blogs have become an invaluable source of information and enjoyment. So by taking a personal slice across the blogosphere I want to illustrate both diversity and quality.
Having started, I have to discipline myself not to rush to put up posts. I am going to ration myself to around a blog per week. That way I can actually take the time to sample the blogs properly, looking back at past entries.
Photo: Gordon Smith, Shearers' Quarters, Hillgrove Station
Gordon Smith's photo blog is one of my all time favourites, one that I visit every day.
Gordon works in IT at the University of New England, Armidale, and lives on a country block some twenty minutes drive to the east of the city.
An inveterate photographer who seems to carry his camera with him everywhere he goes, Gordon posted his first photo on February 29 2004. Since then he has posted nearly every day. This regular posting is one of the blog's attractions because it means that there is always something new.
The photos provide a picture of the life and the countryside on the New England Tablelands with a special focus on the area around Armidale.
For those who do not know the Tablelands, they are a major land form - roughly six hours driving time north-south, three hours east-west - with great variety in scenery from the rugged escarpment in the east to the farming plains of the western slopes.
In the east, the high rainfall escarpment provides the headwaters for major coastal rivers that have cut huge gorge complexes through the ranges, creating spectacular scenery that forms the heart of world heritage listed national parks. In the west, the Tablelands forms a significant part of the Darling River headwaters.
Sadly, the New England Tablelands have receded in Australian popular consciousness.
Sixty years ago, all north-south road and rail traffic between the southern metro cities and Queensland passed through the Tablelands. With the bridging of the coastal rivers, traffic has switched to the coastal route.
The NSW portion of the Great Northern Railway, at its time one of the world's major engineering feats, lies rotting and abandoned, although Queensland has kept its line open to the junction at Wallangarra.
Part of the reason I like Gordon's photos is that they remind me of home. However, you do not need to come from the area to enjoy them. Each photo is accompanied by a short description that makes them accessible to all. I also very much like Gordon's habit of running photos in small series, building a picture of an area or activity.
Return to list of favourite blogs
Two hockey matches this morning separated by almost an hour. We left the house at 6.45am, getting back five hours later.
At matches like these parents share their concerns. This is our second year 12, the final year in the NSW Higher School Certificate. It has been far worse than our first. Other parents also complained about the pressure on their daughters.
One parent commented at the way the school now seems to be giving two very different messages.
The official line remains that the HSC is just one stage, that students should not worry too much, that there are other options. However, there is a second, growing, line that emphasises the school's performance on the league tables, the need always to do better on official measurements.
This led to a discussion on the growing incidence of performance and performance measurement in private schools and the adverse effects this was having.
One parent, a lawyer, wondered just what was in the teacher's contracts. Another talked about school hopping, moving into a school to push up exam performance, then moving on to a higher salary in another school to properly capture the individual gains.
One parent expressed her support for national standards, but changed her mind on the spot when other parents pointed out what this might actually mean on the ground.
Another parent commented that business wanted people who could think and were unhappy with the product they were getting. There was general agreement that education needed to be more about education, less about training.
Not one parent was happy with the education their daughters were getting. However, there was little inclination to blame the school. Rather, the focus was on broader systemic problems.
I expressed the view that the education system was like a huge ship. Once underway, it continued in the same direction for an extended period regardless of changed conditions. We just had to suffer until changing parent perceptions were sufficient to force direction change.
Note to readers: you will find a list of posts in this series at the end of this post.
This post is all out of kilter in that I did my first favourite, View Italy, before writing this post. Still, a few thoughts on my reasons for starting yet another new series.
There are now some 71 million blogs out there.
We all blog for different reasons. Most of us do not aspire to be A list bloggers. We just want to share things. Yet if you are not on the top list, the world does not beat a path to your door. So many good things get lost in the crowded blogosphere. I want to remedy this in a very small way by pointing to my own preferences.
I read many blogs - over forty at the last count - and for many reasons. Some give me food for the soul. Others intellectual stimulation, professional and personal. Here I use blogs to keep in touch in a professional sense, but also sometimes just to satisfy my curiosity.
Some blogs are just friends, familiar things that I like and am used too.
There have been a number of local radio programs recently talking about the role and influence of blogs and, more broadly, of the internet itself. With a Federal election looming in Australia, many of these discussions have focused on the impact of blogs on the political process.
I think that most of this discussion has missed the true influence of blogs and blogging on that process.
Yes, the fact that media outlets and political parties have established blogs or pseudo blogs is interesting and shows that those involved think that blogs are an important tool, but it says nothing about the impact of those blogs. Very little in many cases.
To me, the true influence of blogs and blogging lies in the combination of two things.
The first is the aggregate number of observers. Each has limited time and a partial view. But the total effect is substantial if hard to measure, rather like a rolling Delphi process. The second is the speed of transmission, the way in which things are picked up and spread.
Quite simply, the blogosphere will pick up and discuss things far faster than the conventional media or the indeed the political machines. This also holds true in professional areas where blogs have become a major source of information on professional topics.
So while most of us individual bloggers have little influence, bloggers as a collective group do have an impact.
The blogs that I like reflect my varied interests and span many different areas. Not all will be of general interest, but I hope that each will be of interest to some.
Posts in this series
Photo: Italian politician at rest. View Italy.
We bloggers are always interested in our visitors and in visitor milestones.
Earlier in May I provided an overview of the various blogs and web sites I am involved with. At that time Managing the Professional Services Firm had had 7,968 visitors. Well, visitor 8,000 arrived during the week, so the next target is 9,000.
The next few days should see another small milestone, visitor 4,000 on the Regional Living blog, while this blog should pass 13,000. After that, there will be a gap to the next milestone.
Back in April I complained about Technorati's continued failure to check this site. I did email them as suggested, but still no luck. Ah well.
Later
19 May. Visitor 4,000 has just arrived on Regional Living. Someone from the UK who searched on lemon phase beardies!
A little later visitor 13,000 arrived on this blog. They came from the View Italy blog having first done a search on that blog on Italian vacations. I gave added a photo from one of the stories.
I have to thank Legal Eagle for alerting me to this series from Pravda on swimming tigers.
How would you like to meet this underwater? I shuddered. But its a bit like depression. Our tigers come with us even when we think that we have escaped!
Well, I have now completed the depression series on the Managing the Professional Services Firm blog, including insertion of a full list of posts at the end of each post.
Series like this take a fair bit of time. In writing, I have tried to write from a firm management perspective, suggesting better ways of managing the problem in the work place. The posts have a law firm focus, but the issues and suggestions are (I hope) of general application. I would like to think that series like this make a small but useful contribution to improved management of a growing problem.
For those who are interested, I suggest that you start with my first post on the management of performance problems in the workplace since this sets a context and then follow the series through. The list of posts at the end of each post should make this easy.
My thanks to Neil for his plug, and to Adrian and Legal Eagle for their initial comments on the Wednesday Forum discussion on depression. Legal Eagle also gave the series an earlier plug.
Both Adrian and Legal Eagle have had direct experience with the problem. Most people have had some contact with depression and indeed some depression is a normal part of life. The problem arises when it becomes a debilitating condition.
I will respond to their comments later on the Forum. But I have to cook tea first!
I have been writing a series on depression on the Managing the Professional Services Firm site.
While I still have to complete this, I hope to do so tomorrow, I plan in any case to run a Wednesday Forum on the MPSF site on the issue with a post tomorrow night Australian time. I mention this because it is an important issue and I am looking for comments.
The original idea of the Wednesday Forums was to provide a platform for comment on specific issues. This did not work very well simply because so many visitors come in from external links or web searches. This makes it hard to generate discussion.
I hope this time to do better!
For the benefit of international readers, the looming Australian Federal election has brought to a head a growing but long overdue debate about future directions in Australian education.
My feeling is that the issues in the debate are likely to be of interest not just to Australians but to all those with an interest in education.
So far I have not commented because I have been trying to structure issues in my mind. One of the problems with Australia's supermarket approach to public policy and politics is that it is very easy to get lost in detail, to fail to see patterns and implications. I think that there is a real risk of this happening on the education side.
I will comment. In the meantime, Neil's (Ninglun's) posts provide an interesting introduction to some of the issues, accepting that Neil is writing from a particular perspective.
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